U.S. Coast Guard MH-60T Fleet Receives Honeywell HUMS

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has awarded a $4.8-million contract to Honeywell for the installation of the company’s Zing health and usage monitoring system (HUMS) across the USCG’s fleet of MH-60T helicopters.

The USCG order is for 42 Zing HUMS 1230 aircraft kits and 24 ground support kits. Data collected from sensors located around the aircraft is downloaded into a ground station, which shows the status of a range of components. Data is collected, processed and interpreted from systems including the engines, gearboxes and other dynamic components.

USCG will benefit from this type of HUMS in that it should cut mission aborts due to system malfunctions. HUMS systems are also designed to decrease the requirement for non-essential maintenance due to their monitoring capability. In some cases, HUMS can prevent damage through over maintenance. By monitoring vibration and presenting it through actionable data, faults should be able to be rectified prior to actually failing.

The U.S. Army also uses Honeywell’s HUMS technology in Apache, Kiowa Warrior and Chinook D model helicopters, as well as in Special Operations Command (SOCOM) rotorcraft. It completed installations of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiments MH-47Gs in April and is now working to install the system over the MH-60M fleet.